Microbiome-based informed method to formulate live biotherapeutics

ABSTRACT

Methods of formulating live biotherapeutics are disclosed in which a deficiency or excess of a specific bacterial strain in a person&#39;s microbiome is identified by comparing a gene-specific characterization of the person&#39;s microbiome against a comprehensive, non-redundant reference gene catalog, and the biotherapeutic is formulated by selecting bacteria to address the deficiency or excess. Embodiments include the formulation of live biotherapeutics for improving the health of a person&#39;s vaginal microbiome, i.e. using a vaginal reference gene catalog, and may be suitable for ameliorating, treating, or preventing a malignancy such as a cancer of the female genitourinary system.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No.16/917,661, filed 30 Jun. 2020 (“the '661 application”), which is acontinuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/800,702,filed 25 Feb. 2020, which claims the benefit of priority under 35 U.S.C.§ 119(e) to U.S. Provisional Patent Application 62/915,852, filed 16Oct. 2019 (“the '852 application”), and U.S. Provisional PatentApplication 62/972,243, filed 10 Feb. 2020 (“the '243 application”). The'661 application also claims priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) to the'852 application and the '243 application. The entireties of all of theabove applications are incorporated herein by reference.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to methods for formulatingand/or using live biotherapeutics, and specifically to methods fortreating a patient with a live biotherapeutic formulation based ondifferences between a gene-specific characterization of the patient'smicrobiome and a reference gene catalog of a human microbiome.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The microbial communities that inhabit the human body play criticalroles in the maintenance of health, and dysfunction of these communitiesis often associated with disease. Taxonomic profiling of the humanmicrobiome via 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing has provided criticalinsight into the potential role of the microbiota in a wide array ofcommon diseases, including (among others) bacterial vaginosis, Crohn'sdisease, and psoriasis, but such profiling routinely falls short ofdescribing the etiology of these diseases. This drawback may be due tothe fact that, while 16S rRNA gene sequencing can provide species-leveltaxonomic profiles of a community, it does not describe the genes ormetabolic functions that are encoded in the constituents' genomes. Thisis an important distinction because strains of a bacterial species oftenexhibit substantial diversity in gene content, such that their genomesharbor sets of accessory genes whose presence is variable. It istherefore difficult, if not impossible, to infer the complete functionof a microbial species in an environment using only their 16S rRNA genesequence. As a consequence, to investigate the role of the humanmicrobiome in health and disease, particular emphasis must be placed ondescribing the gene content and expression of these microbialcommunities.

Metagenomic and metatranscriptomic profiling are emerging approachesaimed at characterizing the gene content and expression of microbialcommunities. Results from these approaches have led to increasedappreciation for the important role microbial communities play in humanhealth and disease. Despite the rapid development and increasedthroughput of sequencing technologies, however, current knowledge of thegenetic and functional diversity of human microbial communities is stilllimited. This is due, at least in part, to a lack of resources necessaryfor the analysis of these massive datasets; de novo assembly ofmetagenomic or metatranscriptomic datasets typically requiressubstantial computational resources and complicates integration ofmetagenomic and metatranscriptomic data.

Accurate, high-resolution mapping of metagenomic or metatranscriptomicdata against a comprehensive and curated gene database is an alternativeanalytical strategy that is less computationally demanding, prone tofewer errors, and provides a standard point of reference for comparisonof these data. Development of such curated databases is crucial tofurthering understanding of the structure and function of microbialcommunities. In recent years, international initiatives such as MetaHit,the NIH-funded Human Microbiome Project (HMP), and the InternationalHuman Microbiome Consortium (IHMC) have been established to generate theresources necessary to enable investigations of the human microbiome,including large reference taxonomic surveys and metagenomic datasets.While multiple 16S rRNA gene catalogs exist, there are relatively fewcurated resources for referencing metagenomes and metatranscriptomes,and those that do exist focus only on the gut microbiome of eitherhumans or animal model species. Furthermore, it has been hypothesizedthat allelic differences in certain genes in the human microbiota may beassociated with health or disease, and such allelic differences may thusbe useful as selection criteria and/or biomarkers for identification ofsuitable probiotic strains for use in live biotherapeutic formulations.However, the difficulty of generating gene-specific characterizations ofa person's microbiome and a reference gene catalog of a human microbiomehave, to date, limited the ability of investigators to discover andexploit such gene-specific health outcomes to formulate livebiotherapeutics.

There is thus a need in the art for methods for creating reference genecatalogs for microbiomes of human body sites other than the gut, such asthe oral cavity, the skin, and the vagina. There is a further need inthe art for methods for formulating and administering livebiotherapeutic formulations based on such reference gene catalogs.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Microbiome studies have become increasingly sophisticated with the rapidadvancement of sequencing throughput and the associated decrease insequencing cost. However, identifying features that drive correlationsbetween the microbiome and health using multi-omics sequencing dataremains challenging. This is due, in part, to difficulties in analyzingand integrating the complex metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data nowcommon to microbiome studies. A scalable tool that provides acomprehensive characterization of such multi-omics data is thereforehighly desired. Reference gene catalogs generated according to thepresent invention can be large microbiome databases designed to fulfillsuch research needs for investigations of microbiomes and their relationto health, e.g. the vaginal microbiome and its relation to reproductiveand urogenital health in women. In summary, reference gene catalogsgenerated according to the present invention may provide any one or moreof the following advantages and benefits relative to the solutions ofthe prior art: (i) comprehensive breadth, including previously observedcommunity types, species, and even fungi and viruses; (ii) agene-specific design that enables the integration of functional andtaxonomic characterization of the metagenomic and metatranscriptomicdata originating from the same sample; (iii) a high scalability and lowmemory requirement; (iv) a high sensitivity that affordscharacterization of the gene content of low-abundance bacteria; (v) aneasy-to-use framework from which to evaluate gene richness andwithin-species diversity.

Reference gene catalogs generated according to the present invention cancontain a multitude of non-redundant genes that can be identified frommetagenomes and bacterial isolates. These non-redundant genes can alsobe clustered into orthologous groups, e.g. vaginal orthologous groups(VOGs) when the microbiome being investigated is the vaginal microbiome,using a memory-efficient network-based algorithm that handles nodeconnectivity in high-dimensionality space. This approach to identifyingorthologous protein sequences allows for great flexibility because itdoes not rely on a single sequence similarity cutoff value. Thesefamilies of orthologs can assist the development of a mechanisticunderstanding of these proteins and how they relate to health. Forexample, the L. crispatus pullulanase (pulA) has recently beenidentified, characterized, and shown to encode an enzyme with amylaseactivity, which likely allows the species to degrade host glycogen inthe vaginal environment. Using the methods of the present invention, thepresent inventors have been able to identify pullulanasedomain-containing proteins in 37 other vaginal taxa, including G.vaginalis, L. iners, and P. timonensis, providing insight into thebreadth of vaginal bacteria that may be capable of degrading hostglycogen. In this way, the methods and systems of the present inventioncan facilitate knowledge retrieval, hypothesis generation, futureexperimental validation, and the development of novel and/or tailoredgene-specific live biotherapeutics for administration to a patient inneed thereof.

Using the methods and systems of the present invention, the intraspeciesdiversity present within individual microbial communities, e.g.individual vaginal microbial communities, can be identified andcharacterized. Populations of bacterial species in, for example, vaginalcommunities likely comprise multiple strains. Previous studies of thevaginal microbiome have largely treated these species as singulargenotypes, although some more recent studies have examined intraspeciesdiversity in these communities. Intraspecies diversity is importantbecause it is likely to influence many properties of the communities,including their temporal stability and resilience and their relationshipto host health. However, intraspecies diversity is difficult to detectusing typical assembly-based metagenomic analysis strategies, which arenotoriously ill-suited for resolving strains of the same species. Themethods and systems of the present invention can be a more suitable toolfor characterizing intraspecies diversity because they are built tocontain the non-redundant pangenomes of most species common to themicrobial environment, e.g. the vagina. Strict mapping of sequence readsagainst reference gene catalogs generated according to the presentinvention provides an accurate and sensitive way of identifying theaggregated non-redundant genes that belong to each species in ametagenome, and it is expressly contemplated that the methods andsystems of the present invention may enable future investigations ofintraspecies diversity, and leveraging of such intraspecies diversity(e.g. by formulating live biotherapeutics to regulate and/or maintain adegree of intraspecies diversity associated with health), in microbialcommunities including but not limited to the vaginal microbialcommunity. Methods and systems of the present invention can be used todetermine not only the identity and characteristics of intraspeciesdiversity, but also the structure thereof. As described in thenon-limiting Examples that follow, vaginal metagenomes derived from themicrobiota from different subjects contain related sets ofspecies-specific non-redundant genes. Without wishing to be bound by anyparticular theory, it is believed that these clusters of samples withshared gene content represent similar collectives of strains, which thepresent inventors term “metagenomic subspecies,” and it is expectedthat, given their shared gene content, these metagenomic subspeciesmight also share phenotypic characteristics. As a result, livebiotherapeutics can be formulated that include, or exclude, one or moreidentified metagenomic subspecies to provide, or avoid, an identifiedeffect of the metagenomic subspecies on the health of the microbialenvironment, e.g. the vaginal microbial environment, and by extensionthe host.

One advantage and benefit of the present invention is its usefulness togenerate reference gene catalogs that are both central repositories andhighly scalable tools for fast, accurate characterization of amicrobiome, e.g. a vaginal microbiome. The methods and systems of thepresent invention may be particularly useful for users with limitedcomputational skills, a large volume of sequencing data, and/or limitedcomputing infrastructure. In particular, themetagenome-metatranscriptome data integration enabled by thegene-specific design of the methods and systems of the inventionprovides a powerful approach to determine the expression patterns ofmicrobial functions, and in doing so to characterize contextualizedcomplex mechanisms of host-microbiota interactions in microbialcommunities, e.g. vaginal communities. This feature makes possible themeta-analysis of microbiome features and the quantitative integration offindings from multiple studies, which helps alleviate the common issueof confounding gene copy number that has been a major challenge inanalyzing metatranscriptomic datasets to date. It is also anticipatedthat the methods and systems of the present invention may be used toprocess metaproteomic datasets when that practice becomes common andeasily accessible. Each of the protein sequences of each gene could beused to map peptides obtained from metaproteomic pipelines. It is alsoexpressly contemplated that the methods and systems of the presentinvention may be useful to identify nucleotide variants within agene—which will further facilitate understanding of within-speciesdiversity and change in a microbial ecosystem, e.g. a vaginal ecosystem,and enable even more selective and/or targeted formulation of livebiotherapeutics—and embodiments incorporating this capability are withinthe scope of the present invention. Furthermore, the methods and systemsof the present invention are useful to generate reference gene catalogsincluding gene sequences of non-bacterial microbes, e.g. viral andfungal gene sequences, providing a more complete understanding of themicrobial community of interest.

These and other advantages will be apparent from the disclosurecontained herein.

For purposes of further disclosure and to comply with applicable writtendescription and enablement requirements, the following referencesgenerally relate to systems and methods for formulation andadministration of live biotherapeutics, and are hereby incorporated byreference in their entireties:

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As used herein, “at least one,” “one or more,” and “and/or” areopen-ended expressions that are both conjunctive and disjunctive inoperation. For example, each of the expressions “at least one of A, B,and C,” “at least one of A, B, or C,” “one or more of A, B, and C,” “oneor more of A, B, or C,” and “A, B, and/or C” means A alone, B alone, Calone, A and B together, A and C together, B and C together, or A, B,and C together.

It is to be noted that the term “a” or “an” entity refers to one or moreof that entity. As such, the terms “a” (or “an”), “one or more,” and “atleast one” can be used interchangeably herein. It is also to be notedthat the terms “comprising,” “including,” and “having” can be usedinterchangeably.

The embodiments and configurations described herein are neither completenor exhaustive. As will be appreciated, other embodiments of theinvention are possible utilizing, alone or in combination, one or moreof the features set forth above or described in detail below.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The patent or application file contains at least one drawing executed incolor. Copies of this patent or patent application publication withcolor drawing(s) will be provided by the Office upon request and paymentof the necessary fee.

FIG. 1 is a flowchart illustrating a data processing and integrationscheme for the construction of a human vaginal integrated non-redundantgene catalog (VIRGO).

FIG. 2 is a graph of the percentage of vaginal metagenome reads that canbe mapped to contigs from various reference data sets.

FIG. 3A is a set of species-specific metagenome accumulation curves forthe number of non-redundant genes.

FIG. 3B is a graph of the functional distribution of non-redundant genesin VIRGO.

FIG. 3C is a boxplot of the twenty species having the most abundant genecontent in VIRGO.

FIG. 4A is a boxplot of the number of non-redundant genes in samples ofdifferent community state types (CSTs).

FIG. 4B is a plot of the log₂ transformed ratio of the abundance ofgenes of a species in high gene count (HGC) communities to the sameabundance in low gene count (LGC) communities.

FIG. 5A is an illustration of an analysis of a female human subject'svaginal metagenomes and associated metatranscriptomes were analyzed atfour time points: prior to (T1), during (T2 and T3), and after (T4) anepisode of symptomatic bacterial vaginosis.

FIG. 5B is a functional profile of the metagenome (MG) andmetatranscriptome (MT) of FIG. 5A at each of the four time points.

FIG. 5C is a functional profile of the metagenome and metatranscriptomeof FIG. 5A at each of the four time points, stratified by species usingthe taxonomic profiling provided by VIRGO.

FIG. 6 is an illustration of a relationship between the depth ofsequencing and the number of non-redundant genes identified using VIRGO.

FIGS. 7A and 7B are heatmaps of the presence or absence of non-redundantgene profiles of L. crispatus and L. gasseri, respectively, for 56available isolate genomes (gray) and 413 VIRGO-characterized metagenomesthat contained either more than 50% relative species abundance (red: L.crispatus; green: L. gasseri) or less than 50% relative speciesabundance (cyan).

FIG. 8 is a maximum likelihood tree of the L. crispatus asparaginesynthase B (asnB) gene.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Unless defined otherwise, all technical and scientific terms used hereinhave the same meaning as is commonly understood by one of ordinary skillin the art. All patents, applications, published applications, and otherpublications to which reference is made herein are incorporated byreference in their entirety. In the event that there is a plurality ofdefinitions for a term herein, the definition provided in the BriefSummary of the Invention prevails unless otherwise stated.

“CRISPR” (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)loci refers to certain genetic loci encoding components of DNA cleavagesystems, for example, used by bacterial and archaeal cells to destroyforeign DNA. A CRISPR locus can consist of a CRISPR array, comprisingshort direct repeats (CRISPR repeats) separated by short variable DNAsequences (called spacers), which can be flanked by diverse Cas(CRISPR-associated) genes. The CRISPR-Cas system, an example of apathway that was unknown to science prior to the DNA sequencing era, isnow understood to confer bacteria and archaea with acquired immunityagainst phage and viruses. Intensive research over the past decade hasuncovered the biochemistry of this system. CRISPR-Cas systems consist ofCas proteins, which are involved in acquisition, targeting and cleavageof foreign DNA or RNA, and a CRISPR array, which includes direct repeatsflanking short spacer sequences that guide Cas proteins to theirtargets. Class 2 CRISPR-Cas are streamlined versions in which a singleCas protein bound to RNA is responsible for binding to and cleavage of atargeted sequence. The programmable nature of these minimal systems hasfacilitated their use as a versatile technology that is revolutionizingthe field of genome manipulation.

As used herein, an “effector” or “effector protein” is a protein thatencompasses an activity including recognizing, binding to, and/orcleaving or nicking a polynucleotide target. An effector, or effectorprotein, may also be an endonuclease. The “effector complex” of a CRISPRsystem includes Cas proteins involved in crRNA and target recognitionand binding. Some of the component Cas proteins may additionallycomprise domains involved in target polynucleotide cleavage.

The term “Cas protein” refers to a polypeptide encoded by a Cas(CRISPR-associated) gene. A Cas protein includes proteins encoded by agene in a cas locus, and include adaptation molecules as well asinterference molecules. An interference molecule of a bacterial adaptiveimmunity complex includes endonucleases. A Cas endonuclease describedherein comprises one or more nuclease domains. A Cas endonucleaseincludes but is not limited to: the novel Cas-alpha protein disclosedherein, a Cas9 protein, a Cpfl (Cas12) protein, a C2c1 protein, a C2c2protein, a C2c3 protein, Cas3, Cas3-HD, Cas 5, Cas7, Cas8, Cas10, orcombinations or complexes of these. A Cas protein may be a “Casendonuclease” or “Cas effector protein”, that when in complex with asuitable polynucleotide component, is capable of recognizing, bindingto, and optionally nicking or cleaving all or part of a specificpolynucleotide target sequence.

CRISPR-Cas systems have been classified according to sequence andstructural analysis of components. Multiple CRISPR/Cas systems have beendescribed including Class 1 systems, with multisubunit effectorcomplexes (comprising type I, type III, and type IV), and Class 2systems, with single protein effectors (comprising type II, type V, andtype VI). A CRISPR-Cas system comprises, at a minimum, a CRISPR RNA(crRNA) molecule and at least one CRISPR-associated (Cas) protein toform crRNA ribonucleoprotein (crRNP) effector complexes. CRISPR-Cas locicomprise an array of identical repeats interspersed with DNA-targetingspacers that encode the crRNA components and an operon-like unit of casgenes encoding the Cas protein components. The resultingribonucleoprotein complex recognizes a polynucleotide in asequence-specific manner. The crRNA serves as a guide RNA for sequencespecific binding of the effector (protein or complex) to double strandDNA sequences, by forming base pairs with the complementary DNA strandwhile displacing the noncomplementary strand to form a so called R-loop.RNA transcripts of CRISPR loci (pre-crRNA) are cleaved specifically inthe repeat sequences by CRISPR associated (Cas) endoribonucleases intype I and type III systems or by RNase III in type II systems. Thenumber of CRISPR-associated genes at a given CRISPR locus can varybetween species.

Different cas genes that encode proteins with different domains arepresent in different CRISPR systems. The cas operon comprises genes thatencode for one or more effector endonucleases, as well as other Casproteins. Some domains may serve more than one purpose, for example Cas9comprises domains for endonuclease functionality as well as for targetcleavage, among others. The Cas endonuclease is guided by a singleCRISPR RNA (crRNA) through direct RNA-DNA base-pairing to recognize aDNA target site that is in close vicinity to a protospacer adjacentmotif (PAM). Class I CRISPR-Cas systems comprise Types I, III, and IV. Acharacteristic feature of Class I systems is the presence of an effectorendonuclease complex instead of a single protein. A Cascade complexcomprises a RNA recognition motif (RRM) and a nucleic acid-bindingdomain that is the core fold of the diverse RAMP (Repeat-AssociatedMysterious Proteins) protein superfamily.

Type I CRISPR-Cas systems comprise a complex of effector proteins,termed Cascade (CRISPR-associated complex for antiviral defense)comprising at a minimum Cas5 and Cas7. The effector complex functionstogether with a single CRISPR RNA (crRNA) and Cas3 to defend againstinvading viral DNA. Type I systems are divided into seven subtypes.

Type III CRISPR-Cas systems, comprising a plurality of cas7 genes,target either ssRNA or ssDNA, and function as either an RNase as well asa target RNA-activated DNA nuclease. Type IV systems, althoughcomprising typical type I cas5 and cas7 domains in addition to acas8-like domain, may lack the CRISPR array that is characteristic ofmost other CRISPR-Cas systems.

Class II CRISPR-Cas systems comprise Types II, V, and VI. Acharacteristic feature of Class II systems is the presence of a singleCas effector protein instead of an effector complex. Types II and V Casproteins comprise an RuvC endonuclease domain that adopts the RNase Hfold. Type II CRISPR/Cas systems employ a crRNA and tracrRNA(trans-activating CRISPR RNA) to guide the Cas endonuclease to its DNAtarget. The crRNA comprises a spacer region complementary to one strandof the double strand DNA target and a region that base pairs with thetracrRNA (trans-activating CRISPR RNA) forming a RNA duplex that directsthe Cas endonuclease to cleave the DNA target, leaving a blunt end.Spacers are acquired through a not fully understood process involvingCas1 and Cas2 proteins. Type II CRISPR/Cas loci typically comprise cas1and cas2 genes in addition to the cas9 gene. Type II CRISR-Cas loci canencode a tracrRNA, which is partially complementary to the repeatswithin the respective CRISPR array, and can comprise other proteins suchas Csn1 and Csn2. The presence of cas9 in the vicinity of cas1 and cas2genes is the hallmark of type II loci. Type V CRISPR/Cas systemscomprise a single Cas endonuclease, including Cpfl (Cas12) that is anactive RNA-guided endonuclease that does not necessarily require theadditional trans-activating CRISPR (tracr) RNA for target cleavage,unlike Cas9. Type VI CRISPR-Cas systems comprise a cas13 gene thatencodes a nuclease with two HEPN (Higher Eukaryotes and ProkaryotesNucleotide-binding) domains but no HNH or RuvC domains, and are notdependent upon tracrRNA activity. The majority of HEPN domains compriseconserved motifs that constitute a metal-independent endoRNase activesite. Because of this feature, it is thought that type VI systems act onRNA targets instead of the DNA targets that are common to otherCRISPR-Cas systems.

To comply with written description and enablement requirements,incorporated herein by the following references are the following patentpublications: 2014/0349405 to Sontheimer; 2014/0377278 to Elinav;2014/0068797 to Doudna; 20200190494 to Hou, et. al.; and 2020/0199555 toZhang.

It is one aspect of the present invention to provide a method forameliorating, treating, or preventing a malignancy in a female humansubject, comprising (a) generating a gene-specific characterization, atan intraspecies level, of the subject's vaginal microbial community; (b)comparing the gene-specific characterization to a reference gene catalogof the human vaginal microbiome, wherein the reference gene catalogcomprises at least one metagenome or single-strain genome associatedwith a healthy microbiome; (c) identifying, based on the comparison ofstep (b), a deficiency or excess of at least one bacterial strain in thesubject's vaginal microbial community; (d) formulating a remedial livebiotherapeutic formulation, comprising bacteria adapted to remedy thedeficiency or excess of the at least one bacterial strain in thesubject's vaginal microbial community; and (e) administering theremedial live biotherapeutic formulation to the subject.

In embodiments, the malignancy may be a cancer of the femalegenitourinary system.

In embodiments, the bacteria adapted to remedy the deficiency or excessof the at least one bacterial strain in the subject's vaginal microbialcommunity may comprise a selected strain or consortium of strains of abacterial species selected from the group consisting of Lactobacilluscrispatus, Lactobacillus gasseri, and Lactobacillus jensenii. Thebacteria may, but need not, comprise at least one of (i) Lactobacilluscrispatus bacteria configured to express, carry, harbor, or encode atleast one of the asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene of SEQ ID NO: 1 andthe asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene of SEQ ID NO: 2; and (ii)Lactobacillus crispatus bacteria containing an asparagine synthase B(asnB) gene encoding at least one of a polypeptide of SEQ ID NO: 3 and apolypeptide of SEQ ID NO: 4.

In embodiments, step (a) may comprise at least one sub-step selectedfrom the group consisting of (i) preprocessing sequence data for each ofone or more samples by at least one of removing human contaminants froma sample, quality-filtering, and removing ribosomal RNA; (ii) assemblingat least one metagenome from each of one or more samples by executing aprocedure to generate one or more nucleotide based de novo assemblies;(iii) compiling coding DNA sequences (CDSs); (iv) applying at least onetaxonomic annotation by transitive assignment of species name from readsmapping to contigs; and (v) applying at least one functional annotationusing annotations from one or more functional databases.

In embodiments, the live biotherapeutic formulation may further comprisea pharmaceutically acceptable carrier.

In embodiments, the live biotherapeutic formulation may further comprisean agent adapted to reduce or remove free ammonia from the vaginalenvironment.

It is another aspect of the present invention to provide a method forachieving an improvement in the vaginal health of a female humansubject, comprising (a) generating a gene-specific characterization, atan intraspecies level, of the subject's vaginal microbial community; (b)comparing the gene-specific characterization to a reference gene catalogof the human vaginal microbiome, wherein the reference gene catalogcomprises at least one metagenome or single-strain genome associatedwith a healthy microbiome; (c) identifying, based on the comparison ofstep (b), a deficiency or excess of at least one bacterial strain in thesubject's vaginal microbial community; (d) formulating a remedial livebiotherapeutic formulation, comprising bacteria adapted to remedy thedeficiency or excess of the at least one bacterial strain in thesubject's vaginal microbial community; and (e) administering theremedial live biotherapeutic formulation to the subject, wherein theimprovement is selected from the group consisting of treating bacterialvaginosis in the subject, decreasing ammonia in the vaginal environmentof the subject, reducing inflammation in the subject, preventingovergrowth of at least one of Gardnerella vaginalis and Prevotella spp.in the vagina of the subject, and combinations thereof.

In embodiments, the bacteria adapted to remedy the deficiency or excessof the at least one bacterial strain in the subject's vaginal microbialcommunity may comprise a selected strain or consortium of strains of abacterial species selected from the group consisting of Lactobacilluscrispatus, Lactobacillus gasseri, and Lactobacillus jensenii. Thebacteria may, but need not, comprise at least one of (i) Lactobacilluscrispatus bacteria configured to express at least one of the asparaginesynthase B (asnB) gene of SEQ ID NO: 1 and the asparagine synthase B(asnB) gene of SEQ ID NO: 2; and (ii) Lactobacillus crispatus bacteriacontaining an asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene encoding at least one ofa polypeptide of SEQ ID NO: 3 and a polypeptide of SEQ ID NO: 4. Thebacteria may, but need not, comprise Lactobacillus crispatus, and thepreselected strain or consortium of strains may, but need not, compriseat least one strain selected from the group consisting of LUCA111,LUCA011, LUCA015, LUCA009, LUCA102, LUCA006, LUCA059, LUCA103, andLUCA008.

In embodiments, step (a) may comprise at least one sub-step selectedfrom the group consisting of (i) preprocessing sequence data for each ofone or more samples by at least one of removing human contaminants froma sample, quality-filtering, and removing ribosomal RNA; (ii) assemblingat least one metagenome from each of one or more samples by executing aprocedure to generate one or more nucleotide based de novo assemblies;(iii) compiling coding DNA sequences (CDSs); (iv) applying at least onetaxonomic annotation by transitive assignment of species name from readsmapping to contigs; and (v) applying at least one functional annotationusing annotations from one or more functional databases.

In embodiments, the live biotherapeutic formulation may further comprisea pharmaceutically acceptable carrier.

In embodiments, the live biotherapeutic formulation further may furthercomprise an agent adapted to reduce or remove free ammonia from thevaginal environment.

It is another aspect of the present invention to provide a livebiotherapeutic formulation adapted for administration to the vaginalenvironment of a female human subject, comprising one or more of (i)Lactobacillus crispatus bacteria configured to express at least one ofthe asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene of SEQ ID NO: 1 and the asparaginesynthase B (asnB) gene of SEQ ID NO: 2; (ii) Lactobacillus crispatusbacteria containing an asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene encoding atleast one of a polypeptide of SEQ ID NO: 3 and a polypeptide of SEQ IDNO: 4; and (iii) a preselected strain or consortium of strains ofLactobacillus crispatus, comprising at least one strain selected fromthe group consisting of LUCA111, LUCA011, LUCA015, LUCA009, LUCA102,LUCA006, LUCA059, LUCA103, and LUCA008.

In embodiments, the live biotherapeutic formulation may further comprisea redox potential control agent.

In embodiments, the live biotherapeutic formulation may further comprisea pH buffer configured to maintain a healthy pH of the vaginalenvironment.

In embodiments, the live biotherapeutic formulation may further comprisean antimicrobial agent.

In embodiments, the live biotherapeutic formulation may further comprisea growth promoter.

In embodiments, the live biotherapeutic formulation may further comprisea pharmaceutically acceptable carrier.

The present invention provides methods and systems for constructingreference gene catalogs for human microbiomes, i.e. integrated andcomprehensive resources to establish taxonomic and functional profilingof microbiomes, e.g. vaginal microbiomes, from metagenomic andmetatransciptomic datasets. In the case of vaginal microbiomesspecifically, such reference gene catalogs can be constructed using acombination of metagenomes and urogenital bacterial isolate genomes. Thegenes identified in these data can be further clustered into vaginalorthologous groups (VOGs), providing a catalog of functional proteinfamilies common to vaginal microbiomes. The gene catalog can be curatedwith taxonomic assignments as well as functional features using diverseprotein databases. Importantly, the present inventors have shown thatreference gene catalogs constructed according to the present inventioncan provide greater than 95% coverage of the human vaginal microbiomeand be applicable to populations from North America, Africa, and Asia.The methods and systems of the present invention can thus provide acomprehensive reference repository and a convenient cataloging tool forfast and accurate characterization of vaginal metagenomes andmetatranscriptomes. The reference gene catalogs produced according tothe present invention can be compilations of vaginal bacterial speciespangenomes, creating a vaginal “meta-pan-genome.” Methods and systems ofthe present invention can be further used to characterize the amount ofintraspecies diversity present in individual vaginal communities;whereas previous characterization of these communities using either 16SrRNA gene taxonomic profiling or assembly-based metagenomic analyses hasfailed to resolve this diversity, the present inventors have shown thatvaginal communities contain far more intraspecies diversity thanoriginally expected. This insight challenges the conventional idea thatthe vaginal microbiota are dominated by one strain, or even one species,of Lactobacillus, and has major implications for the ecology of theseotherwise low-diversity bacterial communities. Ultimately, referencegene catalogs produced according to the present invention and theirassociated analytical frameworks can facilitate and standardize theanalysis and interpretation of large metagenomic and metatranscriptomicdatasets, thus expanding understanding of the role of vaginal microbialcommunities in health and disease.

Methods for constructing or generating a reference gene catalogaccording to the present invention generally comprise at least one datacollection step, at least one data processing step, and at least oneredundancy removal step. In the at least one data collection step,metagenomes and/or isolate genomes from one or more microbialcommunities are generally obtained and/or newly sequenced. The at leastone data processing step generally comprises at least one step orsub-step selected from the following: (i) preprocessing sequence datafor each of one or more samples, e.g. by removing human contaminantsfrom a sample, quality-filtering, and/or removing ribosomal RNA; (ii)assembling at least one metagenome from each of one or more samples,e.g. by executing a procedure to generate one or more nucleotide basedde novo assemblies; (iii) compiling coding DNA sequences (CDSs); (iv)taxonomic annotation, e.g. by transitive assignment of species name fromreads mapping to contigs; and (v) functional annotation, e.g. usingannotations from one or more functional databases. The at least oneredundancy removal step generally comprises at least one of clusteringhighly similar genes to avoid spurious inflation and keeping the longestgene of a gene cluster to remove gene fragments. In embodiments, themethod may further comprise at least one orthologous protein familygrouping step, which generally comprises clustering genes using Jaccardindex coefficiency. Reference gene catalogs generated according to thepresent invention generally include, for each orthologous protein familygroup, at least one type of information selected from the following: (i)general attributes (e.g. gene symbol, taxonomic group, gene richnesscategory); (ii) pathway attributes (e.g. ID and annotation); (iii)protein attributes (e.g. category and annotation); (iv) orthologousgroup attributes (e.g. protein family size, alignment score, taxonomicinformation, functional category); (v) alignment(s); (vi) phylogeny orphylogenies; (vii) nucleotide sequence(s); and (ix) amino acidsequence(s).

The present invention also provides methods and systems for treating ahuman patient with a live biotherapeutic formulation. In general, suchmethods include constructing a reference gene catalog by the methodsdescribed herein, comparing a gene-specific characterization of amicrobiome of the patient with the reference gene catalog, identifying adeficiency or overabundance of a bacterial strain in the patient'smicrobial community relative to the reference gene catalog, formulatinga remedial live biotherapeutic formulation comprising bacteria selectedto address the deficiency or overabundance, and administering theremedial live biotherapeutic to the patient.

The methods and systems of the present invention allow users not only toobtain greater insight into human-associated microbial communities, butto translate these insights into clinical biomarkers and treatments,e.g. live biotherapeutics. Deeper understandings of the complexmechanisms of host-microbiota interactions require the integration ofmulti-omics data. The present invention provides for the generation ofreference gene catalogs that serve as a central reference database andan analytical framework to enable the efficient and accuratecharacterization of the microbial gene content of a microbiome, e.g. thehuman vaginal microbiome, and allows for the integrated analysis ofmetagenomic and metatranscriptomic data. The present invention furtherprovides a gene-specific approach to describe the structure of microbialcommunities, e.g. vaginal microbial communities, with fine-scalevariation at the intraspecies level. Such insights into intraspeciesdiversity within a microbial community are far beyond the capabilitiesof current genome references and investigation tools. The presentinvention also facilitates the analysis of multi-omics data now commonto microbiome studies; provides comprehensive insight into communitymembership, function, and ecological perspective of a microbiome, e.g.the vaginal microbiome; and is useful to formulate gene-specific, andtherefore more targeted and effective, live biotherapeutics.

Microbiome studies have become increasingly sophisticated with the rapidadvancement of sequencing throughput and the associated decrease insequencing cost. However, identifying features that drive correlationsbetween the microbiome and health using multi-omics sequencing dataremains challenging. This is due, in part, to difficulties in analyzingand integrating the complex metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data nowcommon to microbiome studies. A scalable tool that provides acomprehensive characterization of such multi-omics data is thereforehighly desired. Reference gene catalogs generated according to thepresent invention can be large microbiome databases designed to fulfillsuch research needs for investigations of microbiomes and their relationto health, e.g. the vaginal microbiome and its relation to reproductiveand urogenital health in women. In summary, reference gene catalogsgenerated according to the present invention may provide any one or moreof the following advantages and benefits relative to the solutions ofthe prior art: (i) comprehensive breadth, including previously observedcommunity types, species, and even fungi and viruses; (ii) agene-specific design that enables the integration of functional andtaxonomic characterization of the metagenomic and metatranscriptomicdata originating from the same sample; (iii) a high scalability and lowmemory requirement; (iv) a high sensitivity that affordscharacterization of the gene content of low-abundance bacteria; (v) aneasy-to-use framework from which to evaluate gene richness andwithin-species diversity.

Reference gene catalogs generated according to the present invention cancontain a multitude of non-redundant genes that can be identified frommetagenomes and bacterial isolates. These non-redundant genes can alsobe clustered into orthologous groups, e.g. vaginal orthologous groups(VOGs) when the microbiome being investigated is the vaginal microbiome,using a memory-efficient network-based algorithm that handles nodeconnectivity in high-dimensionality space. This approach to identifyingorthologous protein sequences allows for great flexibility because itdoes not rely on a single sequence similarity cutoff value. Thesefamilies of orthologs can assist the development of a mechanisticunderstanding of these proteins and how they relate to health. Forexample, the L. crispatus pullulanase (pulA) has recently beenidentified, characterized, and shown to encode an enzyme with amylaseactivity, which likely allows the species to degrade host glycogen inthe vaginal environment. Using the methods of the present invention, thepresent inventors have been able to identify pullulanasedomain-containing proteins in 37 other vaginal taxa, including G.vaginalis, L. iners, and P. timonensis, providing insight into thebreadth of vaginal bacteria that may be capable of degrading hostglycogen. In this way, the methods and systems of the present inventioncan facilitate knowledge retrieval, hypothesis generation, futureexperimental validation, and the development of novel and/or tailoredgene-specific live biotherapeutics for administration to a patient inneed thereof.

Using the methods and systems of the present invention, the intraspeciesdiversity present within individual microbial communities, e.g.individual vaginal microbial communities, can be identified andcharacterized. Populations of bacterial species in, for example, vaginalcommunities likely comprise multiple strains. Previous studies of thevaginal microbiome have largely treated these species as singulargenotypes, although some more recent studies have examined intraspeciesdiversity in these communities. Intraspecies diversity is importantbecause it is likely to influence many properties of the communities,including their temporal stability and resilience and their relationshipto host health. However, intraspecies diversity is difficult to detectusing typical assembly-based metagenomic analysis strategies, which arenotoriously ill-suited for resolving strains of the same species. Themethods and systems of the present invention can be a more suitable toolfor characterizing intraspecies diversity because they are built tocontain the non-redundant pangenomes of most species common to themicrobial environment, e.g. the vagina. Strict mapping of sequence readsagainst reference gene catalogs generated according to the presentinvention provides an accurate and sensitive way of identifying theaggregated non-redundant genes that belong to each species in ametagenome, and it is expressly contemplated that the methods andsystems of the present invention may enable future investigations ofintraspecies diversity, and leveraging of such intraspecies diversity(e.g. by formulating live biotherapeutics to regulate and/or maintain adegree of intraspecies diversity associated with health), in microbialcommunities including but not limited to the vaginal microbialcommunity.

Methods and systems of the present invention can be used to determinenot only the identity and characteristics of intraspecies diversity, butalso the structure thereof. As described in the non-limiting Examplesthat follow, vaginal metagenomes from different subjects contain relatedsets of species-specific non-redundant genes. Without wishing to bebound by any particular theory, it is believed that these clusters ofsamples with shared gene content represent similar collectives ofstrains, which the present inventors term “metagenomic subspecies,” andit is expected that, given their shared gene content, these metagenomicsubspecies might also share phenotypic characteristics. As a result,live biotherapeutics can be formulated that include, or exclude, one ormore identified metagenomic subspecies to provide, or avoid, anidentified effect of the metagenomic subspecies on the health of themicrobial environment, e.g. the vaginal microbial environment.

One advantage and benefit of the present invention is its usefulness togenerate reference gene catalogs that are both central repositories andhighly scalable tools for fast, accurate characterization of amicrobiome, e.g. a vaginal microbiome. The methods and systems of thepresent invention may be particularly useful for users with limitedcomputational skills, a large volume of sequencing data, and/or limitedcomputing infrastructure. In particular, themetagenome-metatranscriptome data integration enabled by thegene-specific design of the methods and systems of the inventionprovides a powerful approach to determine the expression patterns ofmicrobial functions, and in doing so to characterize contextualizedcomplex mechanisms of host-microbiota interactions in microbialcommunities, e.g. vaginal communities. This feature makes possible themeta-analysis of microbiome features and the quantitative integration offindings from multiple studies, which helps alleviate the common issueof confounding gene copy number that has been a major challenge inanalyzing metatranscriptomic datasets to date. It is also anticipatedthat the methods and systems of the present invention may be used toprocess metaproteomic datasets when that practice becomes common andeasily accessible. Each of the protein sequences of each gene could beused to map peptides obtained from metaproteomic pipelines. It is alsoexpressly contemplated that the methods and systems of the presentinvention may be useful to identify nucleotide variants within agene—which will further facilitate understanding of within-speciesdiversity and change in a microbial ecosystem, e.g. a vaginal ecosystem,and enable even more selective and/or targeted formulation of livebiotherapeutics—and embodiments incorporating this capability are withinthe scope of the present invention. Furthermore, the methods and systemsof the present invention are useful to generate reference gene catalogsincluding gene sequences of non-bacterial microbes, e.g. viral andfungal gene sequences, providing a more complete understanding of themicrobial community of interest.

Formulation of Live Biotherapeutics for Vaginal Microbiome Treatment

In reproductive-age women, Lactobacillus spp. are characteristic of anoptimal vaginal microbiota. Lactobacillus spp. produce bacteriocins tosuppress pathogenic growth of certain bacteria, as well as lactic acid.Lactic acid lowers the vaginal pH to around 4.5 or less, hampering thesurvival of other bacteria.

The vaginal microbiome differs in important ways from other microbiomes;for example, while an optimal gut microbiome is a highly diverse,high-biomass microbial community, an optimal vaginal microbiome ischaracterized by low bacterial diversity often dominated by one speciesof Lactobacillus. Specifically, previous metataxonomic studies utilizing16S rRNA gene sequencing analysis have revealed that there are fivemajor Community State Types (CSTs) of the vaginal microbiome, of whichfour are dominated by one species of Lactobacillus: CST I (dominated byL. crispatus), CST II (dominated by L. gasseri), CST III (dominated byL. iners), and CST V (dominated by L. jensenii). CST IV, however, whichincludes the vaginal microbiomes of about 25% of women, is characterizedby a relative dearth of Lactobacillus spp. Low abundance ofLactobacillus in the vaginal microbiome is associated with increasedrisk for severe adverse gynecologic and obstetric outcomes. Adversegynecologic outcomes associated with low Lactobacillus abundanceinclude, but are not limited to, acquisition of sexually transmittedinfections (STIs) (including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV),chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes simplex virus (HSV), and humanpapillomavirus (HPV)), bacterial vaginosis (the most frequently citedcause of vaginal discharge and malodor), yeast infection, urinary tractinfection (UTI), and pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). Adverseobstetric outcomes associated with low Lactobacillus abundance include,but are not limited to, preterm delivery and low birth weight,infertility, stillbirth, premature rupture of membranes (PROM),postpartum and postabortal endometritis, amniotic fluid infection, andchorioamnionitis. Lactobacillus spp. are thus key to reproductive andgynecological health, and not all CSTs are equally protective; CST IV isassociated with high risk to these and other adverse health outcomes,and CST III is suboptimal compared to CSTs I, II, and V (see, e.g.,Vonetta L. Edwards et al., “The cervicovaginal microbiota-hostinteraction modulates Chlamydia trachomatis infection,” 10(4) mBioe01548-19 (August 2019), and Kenetta L. Nunn et al., “Enhanced trappingof HIV-1 by human cervicovaginal mucus is associated with Lactobacilluscrispatus-dominant microbiota,” 6(5) mBio e01084-15 (October 2015), theentireties of both of which are incorporated herein by reference).Moreover, it is known that the distribution of vaginal microbiome CSTsvaries with race; for example, 40.5% of black women and 38.1% ofHispanic women harbor a CST IV vaginal microbiome, compared to 19.8% ofAsian women and 10.3% of white women.

While several proposed solutions to the restoration and maintenance ofvaginal microbiota associated with positive health outcomes exist, theseproposed solutions suffer from several drawbacks. The selection ofstrains used in the formulation of live biotherapeutics (LBPs) isempiric and is based on criteria such as adhesion or antimicrobialproduction, but little or no information is available on the women andthe microbiota from which the strains were cultured. Often, the LBPscomprise strains of a particular species (e.g. L. crispatus, L. gasseri,or L. jensenii) that are not typically found in the vaginal microbiome.In these approaches, there is no ecological or scientific rationale forstrain selection, and the efficacy of LBPs formulated according to theseapproaches has yet to be demonstrated as superior to current drugtreatments.

A list of selected currently available LBPs for maintenance of thevaginal microbiome is given in Table 1.

TABLE 1 Formulation name Ingredients PHYSIOFLOR L. crispatus IP 174178KRAMEGIN L. acidophilus + Krameria triandra plant extract + lactic acidGYNOFLOR L. acidophilus KS400 + estriol LACTAGYN L. acidophilus, L.rhamnosus, S. thermophilus, L. delbrueckii subsp. Bulgaricus GYNOPHILUSL. casei rhamnosus Lcr35 ACTICAND L. fermentum LF10 + L. acidophilusLA02 ESTROMINERAL L. fermentum LF10 + L. plantarum LP02 PROBIOGEL ECOVAGL. gasseri EB01-DSM 14869 + L. rhamnosus Lbp PB01-DSM 14870GYNO-CANESFLOR L. plantarum P17630 FEMILAC L. rhamnosus + L.delbrueckii + L. acidophilus + S. thermophilus SYNBIO GIN L. rhamnosusIMC 501 + L. paracasei IMC 502 GYNOPHILUS LP L. rhamnosus Lcr35regenerans ECOLOGIC FEMI+ B. bifidum W28 + L. acidophilus W70 + L.helveticus W74 + L. brevis W63 FLORISIA L. brevis CD2 + L. salivariussubsp. salicinius FV2 + L. plantarum FV9 LACTIN V L. crispatus CTV-05RC-14/GR-1 L. fermentum RC-14 + L. rhamnosus GR-1 DAYE PROBIOTIC L.plantarum GLP3

Even CST alone, while more informative than its gut microbiomeequivalent, lacks the functional information necessary to formulate aneffective LBP, because the particular strain of Lactobacillus spp. isthe driver of functional specificity and certain strains are better thanothers.

Reference gene catalogs of genes in the vaginal microbiome, generatedaccording to the methods and systems of the present invention, overcomethese drawbacks and allow for the formulation of much more effectiveLBPs. Particularly, because the reference gene catalogs of the presentinvention are comprehensive, have broad application to differentpopulations and ethnicities, and reveal extensive within-womanintraspecies diversity, those who wish to formulate LBPs for restorationof the vaginal microbiota can identify multiple strains of a speciesthat may contribute to (or detract from) the health of the vaginalenvironment and provide functional redundancy that guarantees stabilityof the species in situ in the vaginal environment. The present inventionallows reference gene catalogs created thereby to be leveraged torationally design and select one or more bacterial strains, or a mixture(“consortium”) thereof, as therapeutics.

The present inventors have identified certain features that may bedesired in LBP formulations to provide stability and resilience to thevaginal microbiome. By way of non-limiting example, not all L. crispatusstrains are equally beneficial to host health; vaginal microbiotadominated by L. crispatus can be highly stable, but can also lackresilience upon disturbance, such as the use of a lubricant or sexualintercourse. It is desirable to provide vaginal microbiota dominated bystable and resilient L. crispatus, but prior to the present invention,no known characteristics could predict the stability of L. crispatus.

EXAMPLES

The invention is further described by way of the following non-limitingExamples.

Example 1: Construction of Human Vaginal Non-Redundant Gene Catalog

This Example describes the construction of a human vaginal non-redundantgene catalog (VIRGO) according to the methods of the present invention.

211 newly sequenced vaginal datasets and 53 vaginal datasets downloadedfrom the HMP data repository were obtained. Genome sequences ofdeposited urogenital bacterial isolates were downloaded from multipledatabases, including GenBank, Integrated Microbial Genomes & Microbiomes(IMG/M), and the HMP referencing genome database. After removingduplicate genomes under the same strain names, genomes of 322 urogenitalbacterial strains representing 152 bacterial species were included.

The 211 newly sequenced metagenomes were generated as follows: wholegenomic DNA was extracted from 300 μL aliquots of vaginal ESwabre-suspended into 1 mL of Amies transport medium and preserved at −80°C. Cells were then lysed using a combination of enzymatic digestion(including mutanolysin, lysostaphin, and lysozyme treatment) andmechanical disruption, followed by proteinase K, SDS, and bead beatingsteps. DNA extraction and concentration qualification were performedaccording to the procedures described in Jacques Ravel et al., “Vaginalmicrobiome of reproductive-age women,” 108(S1) Proceeding of theNational Academy of Sciences 4680 (June 2010) (hereinafter “Ravel”), theentirety of which is incorporated herein by reference. The shotgunmetagenomic sequence libraries were constructed from the extracted DNAusing Illumina Nextera XT kits and sequences on an Illumina HiSeq 2500platform (150 bp paired end mode, eight samples per lane).

The metatranscriptomes used to demonstrate the use of the presentinvention for the analysis of community-wide gene expression wereobtained from RNA extracted from vaginal swabs stored in 2 mL of AmiesTransport Medium-RNAlater solution (50/50 by volume) archived at −80° C.A total of 500 μL of ice-cold PBS was added to 1,000 μL of that solutionand spun at 8,000 g for 10 minutes. The pellet was resuspended in 500 μLof ice-cold RNase-free PBS with 10 μL of β-mercaptoethanol. Thesuspension was transferred to Lysis Matrix B tubes containing 100 μL of10% SDS and 500 μL of acid phenol and bead beaten using a FastPrepinstrument for 45 seconds at 5.5 m/s. The aqueous phase was mixed with250 μL of acid phenol and 250 μL of a 24:1 solution of chloroform andisoamyl alcohol. The aqueous layer was again transferred to a fresh tubeand mixed with 500 μL of the chloroform/isoamyl alcohol solution. Foreach part by volume of resulting aqueous solution, 0.1 parts of 3 Msodium acetate, 0.01 parts of 5 mg/mL glycogen, and three parts of 100%ethanol were added. The mixture was incubated at −20° C. overnight toprecipitate the nucleic acids. After centrifugation at 13,400 g for 30minutes at 4° C., the resulting pellet was washed, dried, and dissolvedin 100 μL of DEPC-treated water. Carryover DNA was removed by (1)treating twice with Turbo DNase free at two half-hour intervals,according to the manufacturer's protocol, for rigorous DNase treatment,and (2) purifying twice using gDNA-eliminator columns before and afterDNase treatment, followed by RNeasy column purification. PCR was furtherconducted using 16S rRNA primer 27F (5′-AGAGTTTGATCCTGGCTCAG-3′) and534R (5′-CATTACCGCGGCTGCTGG-3′) to confirm DNA removal. The quality ofextracted RNA was checked using an Agilent 2100 Expert Bioanalyzer Nanochip. Ribosomal RNA removal was performed with a combined Gram-positive,Gram-negative, and human/mouse/rat Ribo-Zero rRNA Removal Kit, accordingto the manufacturer's protocol. The resulting RNA was purified using aZymo Research RNA Clean & Concentrator-5 column kit. Final RNA qualitywas checked using an Agilent RNA 6000 Expert Bioanalyzer Pico chip.Sequencing libraries were prepared using an Illumina TruSeq RNA sampleprep kit with a modification to the manufacturer's protocol: cDNA waspurified between enzymatic reactions and library size selection wasperformed with AMPure XT beads. Library sequencing was performed usingthe Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform (150 bp paired end mode, eight samplesper lane).

Multiple bioinformatics pre-processing steps were applied to the rawshotgun metagenomic sequence datasets, including (1) eliminating allhuman sequence reads (including human rRNA LSU/SSU sequence reads) usingBMTagger v3.101 against a standard human genome reference (GRCh37.p5, asdescribed in Deanna M. Church et al., “Modernizing reference genomeassemblies,” 9(7) PLos Biology e1001091 (July 2011), the entirety ofwhich is incorporated herein by reference); (2) in silico microbial rRNAsequence reads depletion by aligning all reads using Bowtie v1 (asdescribed in Ben Langmead et al., “Ultrafast and memory-efficientalignment of short DNA sequences to the human genome,” 10 Genome BiologyR25 (March 2009), the entirety of which is incorporated herein byreference) against the SILVA PARC ribosomal-subunit sequence database(as described in Christian Quast et al., “The SILVA ribosomal RNA genedatabase project: improved data processing and web-based tools,” 41(D1)Nucleic Acids Research D590 (January 2013), the entirety of which isincorporated herein by reference) to eliminate misassemblies of theserepeated regions, after each of which steps the paired reads wereremoved; and (3) stringent quality control using Trimmomatic v0.36 (asdescribed in Anthony M. Bolger et al., “Trimmomatic: a flexible trimmerfor Illumina sequence data,” 30(15) Bioinformatics 2114 (August 2014),the entirety of which is incorporated herein by reference), in which theIllumina adapters were excised, reads were trimmed using a 4 bp slidingwindow with an average quality score threshold of Q15, and readscontaining any ambiguous bases were removed. MetaPhlAn v2 (as describedin Nicola Segata et al., “Metagenomic microbial community profilingusing unique Glade-specific marker genes,” 9 Nature Methods 811 (June2012), the entirety of which is incorporated herein by reference) wassubsequently used to establish taxonomic profiles after thesepre-processing steps. Samples were then clustered in community statetypes (CSTs) using taxa abundance tables and the Jensen-Shannondivergence metrics as described in Ravel. The 264 vaginal metagenomeswere then assembled using IDBA-UD v1.0 (as described in Yu Peng et al.,“IDBA-UD: a de novo assembly for single-cell and metagenomic sequencingdata with highly uneven depth,” 28(11) Bioinformatics 1420 (June 2012),the entirety of which is incorporated herein by reference) with ak-value range of 20 to 100.

Genes were called on the resulting contigs using MetageneMark v3.25 (asdescribed in Wenhan Zhu et al., “Ab initio gene identification inmetagenomic sequences,” 38(12) Nucleic Acids Research e132 (July 2010),the entirety of which is incorporated herein by reference) to predictcoding DNA sequences (CDSs) with the default settings; FIG. 1illustrates the method used to identify and cluster CDSs. Metagenomicassemblies contributed about 80% of the CDSs, while the remaining about20% originated from urogenital bacteria isolate genome sequences. Genesand gene fragments that were at least 99 bp long, with greater than 95%identity over 90% of the shorter gene length, were clustered together bya greedy pairwise comparison implemented in CD-HIT-EST v4.6 (asdescribed in Weizhong Li et al., “Clustering of highly homologoussequences to reduce the size of large protein databases,” 17(3)Bioinformatics 282 (March 2001), the entirety of which is incorporatedherein by reference), according to the clustering procedure andthreshold described in Junjie Qin et al., “A human gut microbial genecatalogue established by metagenomic sequencing, 464 Nature 59 (March2010) (hereinafter “Qin”), and Junhua Li et al., “An integrated catalogof reference genes in the human gut microbiome,” 32 Nature Biotechnology834 (July 2014), the entireties of both of which are incorporated hereinby reference. The gene with the longest length greater than or equal to99 bp was used as the representative for each cluster of redundantgenes. This process afforded the removal of partial genes and eliminatedovercalling as unique because of sequencing errors.

A total of 948,158 non-redundant CDSs longer than 99 bp were identifiedand retained, representing 17.2% of the original 5.5 million CDSs. Thenewly sequenced vaginal metagenomes used to build VIRGO contributed 12times more non-redundant genes (634,288 genes) than the HMP vaginalmetagenomes (54,500 genes). Combined, the metagenomes contributed twiceas many non-redundant genes as urogenital bacterial isolate genomesequences.

Of the approximately 18 billion reads generated for the newly sequencedmetagenomes, about 14.4 billion (79.7%) were identified as humansequences and removed, but the present inventors found that vaginalmetagenomes dominated by Lactobacillus spp. had significantly higherproportions of human sequence reads than those fromLactobacillus-deficient metagenomes (88.7% vs. 73.3%, t=−6.6, P<0.001).The newly sequenced metagenomes totaled 1.2 million contigs, with acombine length of 2.8 billion base pairs and an N₅₀ of 6.2 kbp. Themetagenomic data obtained from the HMP contributed 40,000 contigs,comprising 100 million bp of assembled sequence; the newly sequencedmetagenomes provided 19.5 times more assembled length than the HMPvaginal metagenomes.

The MetaPhlAn taxonomic analysis of the metagenomes revealed that themicrobial communities contained 312 bacterial species present at arelative abundance of at least 0.01%. Among others, all major vaginalLactobacillus species (L. crispatus, L. gasseri, L. iners, and L.jensenii), as well as common facultative and strict anaerobic vaginalspecies (e.g. Gardnerella vaginalis, Atopobium vaginae, Prevotellaamnii, Megasphaera genomosp., Mobiluncus mulieris, Mageebacillusindolicus (BVAB3), and Veillonella parvula) were identified in themetagenomes. Even bacteria associated with bacterial vaginosis that areoften only present at low abundance—e.g. Finegoldia magna, Peptoniphilusharei, Peptostreptococcus anaerobius, Mobiluncus curtisii, Peptoniphiluslacrimalis, Anaerococcus tetradius, Ureaplasma urealyticum, Veillonellaatypica, and Corynebacterium glucuronolyticum—were represented. Thetaxonomic profiles of 264 metagenomes encompassed the five vaginalcommunity state types (CSTs) reported in Ravel, with frequencies of18.9% for CST I, 3.8% for CST II, 20.5% for CST III, 48.5% for CST IV,and 8.3% for CST V. These results highlight the taxonomic breadth of thevaginal bacterial communities included in the construction of VIRGO.

Example 2: Bioinformatics Analysis

This Example demonstrates the comprehensiveness of reference genecatalogs generated according to the present invention.

The comprehensiveness of VIRGO was tested using vaginal metagenomicsdata from 91 vaginal metagenomes obtained from North American women notincluded in the construction of VIRGO or sequenced in this study, aswell as African and Chinese women, which allowed for determination ofthe utility of VIRGO to analyze metagenomes from other populations. Thesequence reads were first mapped to the VIRGO contigs using Bowtie v2(parameters--threads 4--sensitive-local-D 10-R 2-N 0-L 22-i 5,1,1.75-k1--ignore-quals--no-unal, as described in Ben Langmead and Steven L.Salzberg, 9 Nature Methods 357 (March 2012), the entirety of which isincorporated herein by reference), according to the criteria describedin Qin. Any unmapped reads were compared to the GenBank nt database (asdescribed in NCBI Resource Coordinators, “Database resources of theNational Center for Biotechnology Information,” 45(Database) NucleicAcids Research D12 (January 2017), the entirety of which is incorporatedherein by reference), using BLASTN and an E-value of 1E-10 as cutoff. Toannotate BVAB1 genes in VIRGO, BLASTN and an E-value of 1E-10 as cutoffwere likewise used, and the matched genes with more than 95% identityover more than 90% of gene length were annotated as BVAB1 genes. Toretrieve pullulanase (pulA) genes in VIRGO, conserved protein domain CDDannotation (as described in Aron Marchler-Bauer et al., “CDD: NCBI'sconserved domain database,” 43(D1) Nucleic Acids Research D222 (January2015) (hereinafter “Marchler-Bauer”), the entirety of which isincorporated herein by reference) was used with keyword “pullulanase.”To further demonstrate the comprehensiveness of VIRGO and the fact thatVIRGO captures the pangeome of selected species, species-specificmetagenome accumulation curves and diversity estimates for the number ofnon-redundant genes were constructed by rarefaction with 100 bootstrapsusing R packages iNEXT v2.0 and vegan v2.5-5 (as described in PhilipDixon, “VEGAN, a package of R functions for community ecology,” 14(6)Journal of Vegetation Science 927 (December 2003), the entirety of whichis incorporated herein by reference) for seven species: A. vaginae, G.vaginalis, L. crispatus, L. gasseri, L. iners, L. jensenii, and P.timonensis.

As illustrated in FIG. 2, more than 99% of the reads from North Americanmetagenomes were able to be mapped to the complete VIRGO dataset,whereas only about 55% of these reads mapped to contigs from the HMPvaginal metagenomes subset. This result indicates a lack of geneticdiversity in the HMP vaginal metagenomes, which were derived from highlyselected and otherwise healthy women. Further, despite originating frompopulations not used in the construction of VIRGO, 96% of the reads fromAfrican women and 88% of the reads from Chinese women mapped to thecomplete VIRGO dataset. For these two cohorts 71.7% and 99.9%,respectively, of the reads that failed to map to VIRGO also did not havea match in GenBank.

By including many metagenomes and bacterial isolate genome sequences,each vaginal species' pangenome is represented in VIRGO. The extent ofthis representation is illustrated in the metagenome accumulation curvesfor the seven key vaginal species identified above, as shown in FIG. 3A.These curves track the number of new non-redundant genes added whenincreasing numbers of metagenomes containing a given species areincluded in constructing the database. The accumulation curves for sixof the seven species (all except G. vaginalis), indicating that VIRGOincludes the majority of these species' pangenomes. The number ofnon-redundant genes for five of the six species are similar (about 5,000genes), while for A. vaginae the number is roughly twice this amount.These gene counts pale in comparison, however, to the number ofnon-redundant genes included in VIRGO for G. vaginalis, which surpasses25,000 genes. These results illustrate the comprehensiveness of VIRGOand its broad application to different populations and ethnicities.

Example 3: Taxonomic and Functional Annotation of VIRGO

This Example demonstrates the utility of reference gene catalogsproduced according to the present invention to characterize vaginalmicrobial communities.

The non-redundant genes of VIRGO were annotated with a rich set oftaxonomic and functional information. Genes that originated from anisolate sequence genome were automatically assigned that species name.For metagenomes, taxonomy was assigned to a metagenomic contig bymapping the sequence reads making up that contig to the IntegratedMicrobial Genomes (IMG) reference database (v400) using Bowtie v1(parameters: “−1 25--fullref--chunkmbs 512--best--strata -m 20”). Asecondary filter was applied so that the total number of mismatchesbetween the read and the reference was less than 35 and the first 25 bpof the read matched the reference. Using the results of this mapping,taxonomy was assigned to all genes encoded on the contig that matchedthe following four criteria: (1) at least 95% of the reads mapped to thesame bacterial species, (2) the remaining 5% of off-target reads did notmap to a single species, (3) the contig had at least 2x average coverageand more than 50 reads, and (4) at least 25% of the total length of thecontig had reads mapped thereon. These stringent criteria were used toensure high fidelity of the taxonomic assignments and a low contributionof potentially chimeric contigs. To further diminish the risk ofincorporating false taxonomic assignments, the annotations of thecontigs belonging to species at low relative abundance in the samplewere removed. Genome completeness was estimated as the fractionalrepresentation of the genome in the metagenome using BLASTN (minimaloverlapping of more than 60% of the shorter sequence and more than 80%sequence similarity). For each metagenome, only taxonomic assignmentsoriginating from species with at least 80% representation wereincorporated. The genes that showed more than 80% sequence similarity tothe non-redundant genes over 60% of query gene length were thenassigned. The non-redundant genes in VIRGO were searched against afungal database that included five vaginal yeast species in 40 genomesusing BLASTN, such that a gene must have at least 80% sequencesimilarity over 60% of overlapping length to be curated. Potential phagegenes that may be present in VIRGO were also annotated by searchingagainst phage orthologous groups or prokaryotic virus orthologous groups(version 2016, as described in David M. Kristensen et al., “Orthologousgene clusters and taxon signature genes for viruses of prokaryotes,”195(5) Bacteriology 941 (March 2013), the entirety of which isincorporated herein by reference), using BLASTN and including the geneshaving more than 80% sequence similarity over 60% of query gene lengthin annotation. Functional annotations were based on the standardprocedure for each of 17 functional databases, including cluster oforthologous groups (COG as described in Tatusov, eggnog (v4.5) asdescribed in Huerta-Cepas, and KEGG as described in Kanehisa), conservedprotein domain (CDD as described in Marchler-Bauer, Pfam as described inFinn, ProDom as described in Bru, PROSITE as described in Sigrist,TIGRFAM as described in Haft, and InterPro as described in Hunter),domain architectures (CATH-Gene3D as described in Lam and SMART asdescribed in Letunic), intrinsic protein disorder (MobiDB as describedin Potenza), high-quality manual annotation (HAMAP as described inPetruzzi), protein superfamily (PIRSF as described in Nikolskaya), acompendium of protein fingerprints (PRINTS as described in Attwood), andgene product attributes (Gene Ontology and JCVI SOP as described inTanenbaum). An overview of the eggNOG functions encoded in VIRGO isshown in FIG. 3B.

A total of 445,739 non-redundant genes, comprising 47.0% of VIRGO, wereable to be taxonomically annotated. Overall, 271 unique bacterialspecies were annotated in VIRGO, representing a majority of thedescribed vaginal species. This includes BVAB1, a currently unculturablevaginal species, for which a closed genome and severalmetagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) have recently been made available.When stratified by CST, CST IV metagenomes have the smallest proportion(less than 30%) of their gene content taxonomically annotated, comparedto about 45% to 50% in Lactobacillus-dominated CSTs. The most abundantspecies based on gene content are shown in FIG. 3C. The curatedpotential fungal and phage genes were generally present in low abundance(0.17%±0.04% and 0.03%±0.001%, respectively). An additional 10,908fungal genes and 15,965 phage genes were included.

Overall, 785,268 genes-82.8% of all non-redundant genes—were assigned afunctional annotation from at least one source. This gene-richannotation of the non-redundant gene catalog enables a comprehensivefunctional characterization of vaginal metagenomes andmetatranscriptomes.

The community gene content, or gene richness, can be characterized asthe number of non-redundant genes. As illustrated in FIG. 4A,Lactobacillus-dominated communities were typically categorized as lowgene count (LGC), as 82.9% of these communities have fewer than 1,000genes; Lactobacillus-deficient communities commonly have high gene count(HGC), in that 88.3% of these communities have more than 1,000 genes.Further, genes of a particular vaginal species can be overrepresented inHGC or LGC vaginal communities (FIG. 4B) with distinct functionalmakeups. Lactobacillus spp., particularly L. crispatus, L. jensenii, L.gasseri, and L. vaginalis, were observed to be highly overrepresented inLGC communities. On the other hand, genes belonging to many otherspecies associated with bacterial vaginosis, particularly P. timonensis,P. buccalis, P. amnii, M mulieris, Mageeibacillus indolicus,Porphyromonas uenonis, P. harei, Anaerococcus tetradius, and M.curtisii, were overrepresented in HGC communities. These resultsillustrate that gene richness-based annotations can provide an addeddimension to the understanding of the genetic basis of the biologicalprocesses that drive vaginal microbiomes.

Example 4: Construction of Vaginal Orthologous Groups for ProteinFamilies

This Example illustrates clustering of genes in reference gene catalogsaccording to the present invention based on orthology to generate a setof orthologous groups, in this case vaginal orthologous groups (VOGs).

A modified version of a Jaccard clustering method, as previouslyimplemented in David R. Riley et al., “Using Sybil for interactivecomparative genomics of microbes on the web,” 28(2) Bioinformatics 160(January 2012) (the entirety of which is incorporated herein byreference), was used to cluster genes into VOGs. An all-against-allBLASTP search was performed among the translated coding sequences (CDS)of the non-redundant genes included in VIRGO. The all-against-all BLASTPmatches were used to compute a Jaccard similarity coefficient for eachpair of translated CDSs, without constraints based on the sample ororganism from which it originated. Only BLASTP matches with at least 80%sequence identity, at least 70% overlap, and an E-value of less than1E-10 were used in the calculation of the Jaccard similaritycoefficient. The filtered BLASTP results were then used to defineconnections between pairs of translated CDSs, resulting in a networkgraph with the translated CDSs as nodes and their connections as edges.The Jaccard similarity coefficient was then calculated as the number ofnodes that had direct connections to the two translated CDSs divided bythe total number of nodes that had direct connections to either of thetwo translated CDSs in the network (intersection divided by union, asdescribed in Jonathan Crabtree et al. “Sybil: methods and software formultiple genome comparison and visualization,” in Michael F. Ochs (ed.),Gene Function Analysis 93 (2007), the entirety of which is incorporatedherein by reference). A Jaccard cluster (JACs) was defined as a set oftranslated CDSs whose Jaccard similarity coefficient was at least 0.55.If two translated CDSs from different JACs were reciprocal best matchesaccording to the BLASTP searches, the two JACs were merged and definedas Jaccard orthologous clusters (JOCs). Finally, the alignment programT-Coffee (as described in Cédric Notredame, “T-coffee: a novel methodfor fast and accurate multiple sequence alignment,” 302(1) Journal ofMolecular Biology 205 (September 2000), the entirety of which isincorporated herein by reference) was used to assess the alignmentquality within the JACs and to calculate the alignment score.

The JOCs (orthologous protein families) can be highly conserved (havingan alignment score of more than 950) or partially aligned with bothconserved and variable regions (having an alignment score of about 300).This result highlights the flexibility of the network-based aggregationalgorithm used to recruit both highly similar and distantly relatedproteins without imposing a single similarity threshold. A total of617,127 JACs and 552,679 JOCs were generated, of which 177,684 JOCscontained at least two genes while the remaining 374,995 JOCs weresingletons, indicating that 38.5% of all VOG proteins are unique.

To demonstrate the utility of VOGs, 32 proteins of the orthologousfamily encoding vaginolysin, a G. vaginalis cholesterol-dependentcytolysin that is key to its pathogenicity as it forms pores inepithelial cells, were retrieved. Using the retrieved alignment, threeamino acid variants in an 11-amino acid sequence of domain 4 ofvaginolysin were identified. One of the three variants, analanine-to-valine substitution that is divergent across G. vaginalis,had not been reported previously. Thus, VOGs can be mined to understandbiological relevance—in this case, potential differences in poreformation activity and possibly cytotoxicity, which can be furtherinvestigated and possibly exploited to formulate live biotherapeutics.As another non-limiting example, VOGs were searched using the key phrase“cell surface-associated proteins” and “L. iners” and retrieved twoprotein families, one of which was recognized to have an LPXTG motifwhile the other harbored the motif YSIRK. Notably, a previous study onstaphylococcal proteins suggested that the motifs LPXTG and YSIRK areinvolved in different biological processes related to surface proteinanchoring to the cell wall envelope. The two retrieved protein familiesare specific to L. iners and provide a relevant starting point forfurther investigation of its adherence and/or formulation of livebiotherapeutics leveraging this difference. These results demonstratehow a VOG database generated according to the present invention can beused to explore and exploit more mechanistic understandings of vaginalbacterial communities.

Example 5: Integration of Metagenome and Metatranscriptome Data

This Example illustrates how reference gene catalogs generated accordingto the present invention enable the characterization and integrativeanalysis of the abundance of genes and their expression in amicroenvironment, in this case the vaginal microenvironment.

A female human subject's vaginal metagenomes and associatedmetatranscriptomes were analyzed at four time points: prior to (T1),during (T2 and T3), and after (T4) an episode of symptomatic bacterialvaginosis, as illustrated in FIG. 5A (the arrows represent, from left toright, the time points T 1-T4). Unsurprisingly, the expressed functionsrepresented in the metatranscriptomes were often different from theencoded functional makeup of the corresponding metagenomes, asillustrated in FIG. 5B. VIRGO provided rapid binning of genes byspecies, which revealed dramatic differences in gene abundance and theirtranscriptional activity in vaginal species, as illustrated in FIG. 5C.Prior to the episode of bacterial vaginosis (time point T1), a smallproportion (1.5%) of L. iners genes were present, but these genesexhibited high expression levels, accounting for over 20% of themetatranscriptome. At the same time point, L. crispatus genes made upthe majority of the genes present (96.3%) but exhibited low expressionlevels (34.2% of the metatranscriptome). By contrast, near the end ofthe episode of bacterial vaginosis (time point T3), L. crispatus genesmade up a small proportion of the metagenome but were highlytranscriptionally active. This increased activity corresponded with L.crispatus regaining dominance at T4, following the resolution of theepisode of bacterial vaginosis. Notably, the functions encoded by G.vaginalis were similar between T2 and T3, but their expression differedbetween these time points. By enabling this integration of these typesof data, reference gene catalogs generated according to the presentinvention can thus provide a functional understanding of the microbiota,e.g. the vaginal microbiota, and provide insight into the formulation ofappropriate live biotherapeutics for the treatment of a particulardisease or disorder associated with specific metagenomic and/ormetatranscriptomic characteristics.

Example 6: Characterization of Within-Community Intraspecies Diversity

This Example illustrates how reference gene catalogs generated accordingto the present invention can be used to conduct intraspecies diversityanalyses.

Intraspecies diversity analyses were conducted by mapping isolate genomesequences and vaginal metagenomes to VIRGO. The analysis was focused onthe seven vaginal species discussed in Example 2 above. A total of 1,507vaginal metagenomes, including 1,403 metagenomes newly obtained fromde-identified vaginal swab and lavage specimens and 76 publiclyavailable metagenomes, were mapped against VIRGO. For each of the sevenbacterial species, a presence/absence matrix for the species'non-redundant genes, including the data from the species' isolategenomes and all metagenomes that contained at least 80% of the averagenumber of genes encoded on a genome of that species, was constructed.Comparisons of the number of non-redundant genes present in the speciesisolate genomes against the metagenomes in which they appeared wereconducted using the student t-test. Hierarchical clustering wasperformed on the Boolean matrix of the species' non-redundant genesusing Jaccard clustering implemented in the vegan package in R.

The number of non-redundant genes identified in a metagenome was notfound to correlate with the depth sequencing, as illustrated in FIG. 6.Most of each species' gene content was recovered even when that specieswas present at low abundance (less than 1%) in a community. Forinstance, even though P. timonensis was generally present in lowabundance in these metagenomes (mean 4.8%, standard deviation 0.3%,minimum 0.1, maximum 33.8%), the majority of its genome was recovered(2,469±401 CDSs). Similarly high sensitivity was observed in theanalysis of the other six selected vaginal species. These resultsdemonstrate the capability of reference gene catalogs generatedaccording to the present invention to characterize the gene content ofeven low-abundance taxa from metagenomics data.

Using these species-specific gene repertoires, the amount ofintraspecies diversity present within an individual woman's vaginalmicrobiome can be characterized. Because VIRGO (or another referencegene catalog of the invention) comprises the “pangenomes” of eachvaginal bacterial species, it can be used to evaluate the amount ofintraspecies diversity present in microbiome communities. The number ofgenes that were assigned to each of the seven species in each of the1,507 metagenomic datasets were counted and compared to the number ofgenes found in each species' reference genome. The number of genes for aspecies in a community often exceeded the number found in a singleisolate genome, as illustrated in FIGS. 6A and 6B, suggesting thatmultiple strains of a species co-occur in vaginal bacterial communities.The total number of L. crispatus genes identified in each of themetagenomes where it was detected contained, on average, 1.6 times moregenes (3,262±586) than were found encoded on L. crispatus genomes(2,064±225, P<0.001). Similar results were observed for G. vaginalis, A.vaginae, L. iners, L. jensenii, and L. gasseri. Among these species, G.vaginalis and A. vaginae exhibited the highest degree of intraspeciesdiversity, while L. crispatus had the highest within-metagenomeintraspecies diversity among the major Lactobacillus spp., asillustrated in FIG. 7A. These results suggest that an individual woman'svaginal bacterial population routinely comprises more than one strain ofmost species, and indicates that reference gene catalogs generatedaccording to the present invention enable the investigation of thisintraspecies diversity and/or leveraging of such diversity to formulatelive biotherapeutics.

Well-established practices from pangenomics, e.g. the proceduresdescribed in Hervé Tettelin et al., “Genome analysis of multiplepathogenic isolates of Streptococcus agalactiae: implications for themicrobial ‘pan-genome,’” 102(39) Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences 13950 (September 2005) (the entirety of which is incorporatedherein by reference), were applied to identify “core” and “accessory”non-redundant genes among the sample-specific species gene repertoires.Based on the clustering patterns of gene prevalence profiles, groups ofconsistently present (“core”) and variably present (“accessory”)non-redundant genes could be defined. The majority of the observed genesfor each of the species were categorized as “accessory,” with variablerepresentation across the datasets. Using L. crispatus as an example,more than twice as many non-redundant genes were observed to havevariable representation across the metagenomes than were present inevery sample, as illustrated in FIG. 7A. Notably, it is clear from thisanalysis that the gene content identified with VIRGO in genome sequencesof L. crispatus underrepresent the intraspecies genetic diversitypresent in the metagenomes. Similar results were observed for the othersix species analyzed, although the magnitude of the difference betweenthe metagenome and isolate gene repertoires varied depending on thespecies. Overall, VIRGO revealed that metagenomic data carry a moreextensive gene content than is found in all combined isolate genomesequences.

Example 7: Metagenomic Subspecies in Vaginal Ecosystem

This Example illustrates how reference gene catalogs generated accordingto the present invention can be used to identify metagenomic subspecies(“MG-subspecies”).

Hierarchical clustering of the metagenome species-specific gene contentprofiles revealed distinct groupings, defined herein as metagenomicsubspecies or MG-subspecies. These metagenomic subspecies representtypes of bacterial populations that share a similar gene pool asassessed by shotgun metagenomic sequence data. For example, thisanalysis revealed at least three distinct metagenomic subspecies for L.gasseri, as illustrated in FIG. 7B. L. gasseri MG-subspecies I and IIIhave large sets of non-redundant genes that are present in one but notthe others, while L. gasseri MG-subspecies II carries a blend of thegenes from both MG-subspecies I and III. Analysis of G. vaginalisrevealed at least five MG-subspecies, concordant with previous studiesthat had identified multiple clades within the species. However, it wasalso found that the genome-based paradigm largely underrepresents thediversity of G. vaginalis gene content that was identified inmetagenomes. The foregoing analysis was applied to seven vaginalspecies, and it was found that vaginal microbial communities are oftencomposed of complex mixtures of multiple strains of the same species,and that these mixtures can be clustered into distinct MG-sub species.Reference gene catalogs generated according to the present inventionthus enable investigation of MG-subspecies in the human microbiome andtheir gene contents, which in turn can reveal novel features of themicrobiome and sub-populations thereof that allow for, e.g., selection,tuning, and/or optimization of strains for use in live biotherapeuticformulations.

Example 8: Gene-Specific Effect of Microbial Species on MicrobiomeHealth

This Example illustrates the use of reference gene catalogs generatedaccording to the present invention to formulate live biotherapeutics.

The use of VIRGO revealed a stability pattern of the microbiota fromwhich isolates of Lactobacillus crispatus were cultured. Specifically,using a DBGWAS method (as described in Magali Jaillard et al., “A fastand agnostic method for bacterial genome-wide association studies:bridging the gap between k-mers and genetic events,” 14(11) PLoSGenetics e1007758 (November 2018), the entirety of which is incorporatedherein by reference) in conjunction with VIRGO, it was discovered thatsequence variants of the asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene of L.crispatus were strongly associated with stability of L. crispatus in thevaginal environment, as illustrated in FIG. 8.

Metabolomics have indicated that asparagine synthase can synthesizeasparagine from aspartate and glutamine (in which case glutamate is alsoproduced) and/or from aspartate and ammonia. As has been demonstratedpreviously, e.g. in Pybus, two pathogenic bacteria (G. vaginalis and P.bivia) associated with bacterial vaginosis and other adverse healthoutcomes (e.g. inflammation, preterm birth, increased risk of STI) relyon an ammonia-based cycle to flourish in the vaginal environment. Thus,the ability of L. crispatus to sequester ammonia in the vagina may breakthis cycle and slow or prevent the growth of G. vaginalis and P. bivia.Without wishing to be bound by any particular theory, it is believedthat the identified sequence variants in the asnB gene of L. crispatusmay affect glutamine binding and thus production of asparagine by theammonia sequestration mechanism, thereby preventing the growth of thepathogenic species and resulting in a more stable vaginal environment.

In addition to G. vaginalis and P. bivia, another common pathogen in thevaginal environment is uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC). UPECcauses 80% of all UTI, which affects over ten million women in theUnited States alone each year, is highly recurrent, and is often highlyantibiotic-resistant. UPEC is known to reside in the intestinal tract,but also in the vaginal tract, where it can infect the urethra andultimately the bladder. Recurrent UTI is an unaddressed healthcare need,and live biotherapeutics that are effective against UPEC are thereforehighly desirable.

Three strains of L. crispatus having the stability-associated asnB gene(identified herein as LUCA015, LUCA011, and LUCA09) were parallel streakassayed against UPEC, clinical P. bivia, and clinical G. vaginalis onMRS agar+1% starch. After 24 hours, the inhibiting effects of eachstrain against each pathogen were scored. The results of the assay aregiven in Table 2.

TABLE 2 E. coli P. bivia G. vaginalis CFT073 C0046E2 C0047B2 L crispatusLUCA015 +++ +++ +++ L crispatus LUCA011 +++ +++ +++ L crispatus LUCA009+++ +++ +++ Legend: - = no apparent inhibition; + = about 25%inhibition; ++ = about 50% inhibition; +++ = about 75% inhibition; ++++= apparently complete inhibition

These results indicate that the effectiveness of live biotherapeuticformulations can be greatly enhanced by gene-specific selection ofbacterial strains included in the live biotherapeutic formulation.

Example 9: Formulation of Gene-Specific Live Biotherapeutic

This Example further investigates the antimicrobial effect of particularL. crispatus strains on common vaginal pathogens.

Using the techniques described herein, nine strains of L. crispatus wereidentified as having a stability-associated asnB sequence variant, asdescribed in the preceding Example. Aliquots of these strains wereprepared according to Table 3.

TABLE 3 ID Strain CFU/mL 1 LUCA111 7.60 · 10⁷ 2 LUCA011 7.00 · 10⁸ 3LUCA015 2.16 · 10⁸ 4 LUCA009 5.18 · 10⁸ 5 LUCA102 3.80 · 10⁷ 6 LUCA0069.00 · 10⁷ 7 LUCA059 2.18 · 10⁸ 8 LUCA103 2.10 · 10⁸ 9 LUCA008 1.54 ·10⁸

Consortia, or “cocktails,” comprising mixtures of four strains were alsoprepared according to Table 4. (In the table, “strain 1” refers to themost abundant strain in the consortium, “strain 2” to the second-mostabundant strain, and so on.)

TABLE 4 Consortium Strain 1 Strain 2 Strain 3 Strain 4 ID ID ID ID IDCFU/mL A 1 7 3 9 4.74 · 10⁸ B 2 4 3 8 5.20 · 10⁷ C 2 4 3 7 4.50 · 10⁸ D7 4 3 5 5.72 · 10⁸ E 9 4 3 8 5.40 · 10⁸ F 6 3 4 2 5.48 · 10⁸ G 7 3 6 94.08 · 10⁸ H 7 6 5 9 1.10 · 10⁸

Each of the pure strains and consortia of strains was parallel streakassayed against three vaginal pathogens on each of pure MRS agar and MRSagar+1% starch. After 24 hours, the inhibiting effects of each strainagainst each pathogen were scored. The results of the assay are given inTable 5.

TABLE 5 MRS MRS + 1% starch Prevotella UPEC UPEC G. vag. G. vag. UPEC IDC0117C5 CT131 CT073 ATCC C0056B5 CT131 1 ++ ++++ ++++ ++ +++ ++++ 2 ++++++ ++++ ++ ++++ ++++ 3 ++ ++++ ++++ ++ +++ ++++ 4 ++ ++++ ++++ ++ +++++++ 5 + ++++ ++++ + ++ ++++ 6 ++ ++++ ++++ ++ +++ ++++ 7 ++ ++++ ++++− + +++ 8 +++ ++++ ++++ +++ ++++ ++++ 9 ++ ++++ ++++ ++ +++ ++++ A +++++++ ++++ +++ ++++ ++++ B +++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ C +++ ++++ +++++++ ++++ ++++ D ++ ++++ ++++ +++ ++++ ++++ E ++++ ++++ ++++ ++ +++ ++++F ++ ++++ ++++ + ++ ++++ G ++ ++++ ++++ + +++ ++++ H ++ ++++ ++++ ++ ND++++ Legend: − = no apparent inhibition; + = about 25% inhibition; ++ =about 50% inhibition; +++ = about 75% inhibition; ++++ = apparentlycomplete inhibition

These results indicate that the effectiveness of live biotherapeuticformulations can be greatly enhanced by gene-specific selection ofbacterial strains included in the live biotherapeutic formulation, andparticularly by gene-specific selection of consortia of two or morebacterial strains.

The invention illustratively disclosed herein suitably may be practicedin the absence of any element which is not specifically disclosedherein. It is apparent to those skilled in the art, however, that manychanges, variations, modifications, other uses, and applications of theinvention are possible, and also changes, variations, modifications,other uses, and applications which do not depart from the spirit andscope of the invention are deemed to be covered by the invention, whichis limited only by the claims which follow.

The foregoing discussion of the invention has been presented forpurposes of illustration and description. The foregoing is not intendedto limit the invention to the form or forms disclosed herein. In theforegoing Detailed Description of the Invention, for example, variousfeatures of the invention are grouped together in one or moreembodiments for the purpose of streamlining the disclosure. By way ofnon-limiting example, although much of the foregoing disclosure hasfocused on the human vaginal microbiome and features associatedtherewith, it is to be expressly understood that the invention isapplicable, mutatis mutandis, in conjunction with other microbiomesand/or microbiotic communities, including but not limited to the humanskin microbiome, the human conjunctival microbiome, the humangastrointestinal tract microbiome, the microbiome of the human urethraand bladder, the human placental microbiome, the human uterinemicrobiome, the human oral cavity microbiome, the human lung microbiome,the human biliary tract microbiome, and any one or more non-humanmicrobiomes.

The features of the embodiments of the invention may be combined inalternate embodiments other than those discussed above. This method ofdisclosure is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that theclaimed invention requires more features than are expressly recited ineach claim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive aspectslie in less than all features of a single foregoing disclosedembodiment. Thus, the following claims are hereby incorporated into thisDetailed Description of the Invention, with each claim standing on itsown as a separate preferred embodiment of the invention.

Moreover, though the description of the invention has includeddescription of one or more embodiments and certain variations andmodifications, other variations, combinations, and modifications arewithin the scope of the invention, e.g. as may be within the skill andknowledge of those in the art, after understanding the presentdisclosure. It is intended to obtain rights which include alternativeembodiments to the extent permitted, including alternate,interchangeable, and/or equivalent structures, functions, ranges, orsteps to those claimed, whether or not such alternate, interchangeable,and/or equivalent structures, functions, ranges, or steps are disclosedherein, and without intending to publicly dedicate any patentablesubject matter.

1. A live biotherapeutic formulation adapted for administration to avaginal environment of a female human subject, comprising a selectedstrain or consortium of strains, wherein the selected strain orconsortium of strains consists essentially of any combination of: (i)Lactobacillus crispatus bacteria configured to express at least one ofthe asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene of SEQ ID NO: 2 and the asparaginesynthase B (asnB) gene of SEQ ID NO: 3; (ii) Lactobacillus crispatusbacteria containing an asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene encoding atleast one of a polypeptide of SEQ ID NO: 5 and a polypeptide of SEQ IDNO: 6; and (iii) a preselected strain or consortium of strains ofLactobacillus crispatus, comprising at least one strain selected fromthe group consisting of LUCA111, LUCA011, LUCA015, LUCA009, LUCA102,LUCA006, LUCA059, LUCA103, and LUCA008.
 2. The live biotherapeuticformulation of claim 1, wherein the live biotherapeutic formulationfurther comprises a pH buffer configured to maintain a healthy pH of thevaginal environment and a redox potential control agent.
 3. The livebiotherapeutic formulation of claim 1, further comprising apharmaceutically acceptable carrier.
 4. The live biotherapeuticformulation of claim 1, further comprising an agent adapted to reduce orremove free ammonia from the vaginal environment.
 5. The livebiotherapeutic formulation of claim 1, comprising Lactobacilluscrispatus bacteria configured to express the asparagine synthase B(asnB) gene of SEQ ID NO:
 2. 6. The live biotherapeutic formulation ofclaim 1, comprising Lactobacillus crispatus bacteria configured toexpress the asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene of SEQ ID NO:
 3. 7. Thelive biotherapeutic formulation of claim 1, comprising Lactobacilluscrispatus bacteria containing an asparagine synthase B (asnB) geneencoding the polypeptide of SEQ ID NO:
 5. 8. The live biotherapeuticformulation of claim 1, comprising Lactobacillus crispatus bacteriacontaining an asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene encoding the polypeptideof SEQ ID NO:
 6. 9. The live biotherapeutic formulation of claim 1,further comprising a redox potential control agent.
 10. The livebiotherapeutic formulation of claim 1, further comprising a pH bufferconfigured to maintain a healthy pH of the vaginal environment.
 11. Thelive biotherapeutic formulation of claim 1, further comprising anantimicrobial agent.
 12. The live biotherapeutic formulation of claim 1,further comprising a growth promoter.
 13. A live biotherapeuticformulation adapted for administration to a vaginal environment of afemale human subject, comprising a selected strain or consortium ofstrains, wherein the selected strain or consortium of strains consistsessentially of any combination of: (i) Lactobacillus crispatus bacteriaconfigured to express at least one of the asparagine synthase B (asnB)gene of SEQ ID NO: 2 and the asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene of SEQ IDNO: 3; and (ii) Lactobacillus crispatus bacteria containing anasparagine synthase B (asnB) gene encoding at least one of a polypeptideof SEQ ID NO: 5 and a polypeptide of SEQ ID NO: 6; and wherein the livebiotherapeutic formulation further comprises at least one of anantimicrobial agent, a redox potential control agent and a pH bufferconfigured to maintain a healthy pH of the vaginal environment.
 14. Thelive biotherapeutic formulation of claim 13, further comprising a growthpromoter.
 15. The live biotherapeutic formulation of claim 13, whereinthe live biotherapeutic formulation further comprises a redox potentialcontrol agent.
 16. The live biotherapeutic formulation of claim 13,wherein the live biotherapeutic formulation further comprises a pHbuffer configured to maintain a healthy pH of the vaginal environment.17. A live biotherapeutic formulation adapted for administration to avaginal environment of a female human subject, comprising bacteriaadapted to remedy a deficiency or excess of at least one bacterialstrain in the subject's vaginal microbial community, wherein thebacteria comprise a selected strain or consortium of strains comprisesat least one of: (i) Lactobacillus crispatus bacteria configured toexpress at least one of the asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene of SEQ IDNO: 2 and the asparagine synthase B (asnB) gene of SEQ ID NO: 3; and(ii) Lactobacillus crispatus bacteria containing an asparagine synthaseB (asnB) gene encoding at least one of a polypeptide of SEQ ID NO: 5 anda polypeptide of SEQ ID NO: 6, wherein the live biotherapeuticformulation further comprises at least one of an antimicrobial agent anda pH buffer configured to maintain a healthy pH of the vaginalenvironment.
 18. The live biotherapeutic formulation of claim 17,further comprising an agent adapted to reduce or remove free ammoniafrom the vaginal environment.
 19. The live biotherapeutic formulation ofclaim 17, wherein the live biotherapeutic formulation further comprisesan antimicrobial agent.
 20. The live biotherapeutic formulation of claim17, further comprising a growth promoter.